Sunday, July 2, 2023
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Another action-packed week in the books. It’s hard to think that we’re halfway through the summer already.
In terms of work, this was the most eventful week of the summer. I was given data to analyze and create charts showing the results. Conceptually it was not a struggle to do. However, in order to do that, I needed to write code in a program called MATLAB. I have never used MATLAB prior to this. Through the course of the first three days of the week, I was teaching myself how to use MATLAB. More specifically, I learned how to perform the specific task I needed. I attached a photo of the chart I created, but I’m not going to go in-depth about how it works or what each line represents. That would take too long for a blog post. I finished the chart on Wednesday, then needed to do it all over again with a new dataset which didn’t take long because I already had the code. Thursday at work was uneventful, and I did not go in on Friday for reasons later discussed in the blog.
In terms of the social aspect of the week, I participated in activities every day of the week. Monday night was an event called Astronomy on Tap. We got to hear three different speakers who were all extremely knowledgeable in their respective fields. The first talk involved the sun and its magnetic features, the second was on exoplanets and their respective host stars, and the final was about black holes. They had bingo going on during the talks, so in the presentations, if the speaker said a keyword, you’d cross it off the bingo card. I won and got a sticker. They also had trivia between speakers. Unfortunately, I did not win. However, there were six winners, I believe, and all of them were a part of the internship program.
Tuesday night, a few of us went to an open mic comedy night. None of us performed, but it was a fun night. We mainly went because they said there was going to be bingo also to win free drinks. The issue was that many of the bingo squares were ambiguous, so it wasn’t very clear when you got a space. A couple of people in the group won bingo, but I don’t know if they actually won because of the ambiguity.
Wednesday night, a large group of us went kayaking on the Potomac. We got to go out for two hours for $15. The company that runs it is the Potomac Conservancy, so ultimately, the fifteen dollars was a donation to help further clean up the river quality.
Skipping to Friday, we got to tour the Capitol Building around one. Which is the reason I didn’t go to NIST on Friday. It was cool because the intern working on the hill, Ruthie, led the tour. I’ve been to the Capitol before, but it was so long ago that the introduction video had changed a ton. I also barely remember the first time I was there, so it was neat to go through it again. Because I didn’t go to work on Friday, a couple of us went to dollar beer night Thursday night. That was really fun because since I’ve been in DC, I haven’t liked the prices of drinks compared to Wisconsin, so it was nice to have a deal that I supported.
Saturday, the entire afternoon/night was taken up by a 4th of July bar crawl. I’ve never done a bar crawl. The experience was great but set up a little differently from the ones I know in Wisconsin. I think it was because of the scale of the bar crawl here, but I understand them as going in order from one bar to another. The crawl here was essentially going wherever you want within the list of bars in the crawl. I also tried Muncheez, which is Lebanese food. I thought it was great, but I can’t remember for the life of me what the dish I got was called.
Sunday was very similar to last week. The only thing I accomplished today was making dinner and writing this blog post. I’ll be back in a week for the next one.
Clayton Markech